


Sunlight and Salt

by madame_faust



Series: The Ghost and the Persian [1]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Gen, Not Beta Read, Not Own Voices, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: The Daroga of Mazandaran prides himself on being observant, unbiased, and clever. Which is why he was so startled when he realized he was entirely mistaken in his assessment of the Shah's new court magician.(Or, that one where the Persian realizes Erik is basically a very tall child. Also! This is tied directly to my fic 'Promises Kept,' so Erik is going by Ismail in this one and the Daroga is neither a Dalir or a Nadir.)
Relationships: Erik | Phantom of the Opera/The Persian
Series: The Ghost and the Persian [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734133
Comments: 22
Kudos: 17





	Sunlight and Salt

**Author's Note:**

> This fic makes no claim to historical accuracy - I vaguely based the design of the palace on the Ramsar Palace since I like the look and location, but that wasn't built until 1937. I also referenced "the Russian photographer," (Antoin Sevruguin) who wouldn't have been at court yet when Erik was in Persia if we're following the Leroux timeline.

The royal household in Mazandaran was like nothing Farrokh could have imagined the court magician designing. When he came to examine the construction he anticipated something in the Muscovite tradition - pretty at first glance, but with a complex grandeur that transfixed the eye, full of dark corners and shadows inside, as befitting the usual tastes and tricks of their infamous master of trap-doors.

When instead he saw a whitewashed portico and enormous gleaming windows, he thought he had been brought to the wrong half-completed palace. It looked almost like a greenhouse or a particularly large and beautiful garden shed; bright, airy, a conductor of light among the greenery, vivid white offset by the blue sky.

"Daroga!"

No doubt that this was the place; its architect was bounding across the lawn toward him, the veil of his mask fluttering with the breeze he created as he bolted toward him, skirting around the edges of an enormous hole in the ground; a muddy patch of brown which marred the earth and was the only spot of ugliness upon the scene. 

"The reflecting pool," Ismail explained, deep-set eyes narrowed to slits behind the eyeholes of his mask. The sun was directly behind Farrokh and Ismail lifted a hand to shield his eyes further; his fingers, pale though they already were, were further whitened with plaster. Not just a designer, but a builder as well. Ismail could never resist getting his hands dirty. "It looks like a shit-hole, now, but I promise, when the tile is laid, it will be lovely!"

"I'll take your word for it," Farrokh replied, glancing between the building and its designer, trying to reconcile the two; perhaps it contained mysteries inside. He remembered once how Ismail created a cunningly designed cabinet, plain wood on the exterior, but with the throw of a lever it unfolded revealing two automata, a man and a woman in Western dress who rose like flowers blooming and danced together in a miniature ballroom to the tinny strains of a music box waltz. 

He also remembered what followed; another cabinet, plain on the exterior which worked in reverse. Its trigger mechanism closed the walls in upon an unfortunate victim. Perversely, like the creation that inspired it, it also played a tinkling, mechanical waltz.

"Do you want to see inside?" Ismail did not wait for a reply, seizing Farrokh by the wrist and dragging him along, mindful not to get too near the pit. Farrokh suppressed a shudder; he was not a man of tremendous imagination himself, but he could only imagine what Ismail's psyche might design for a 'reflecting pool' and had to forcibly banish away the images of men boiling alive within, like in his damned hall of mirrors.

Beside him, cold hands encircling his wrist, Ismail chattered with a verve and excitement Farrokh had not beheld in him for nearly a year. Now, when the two met away from court, Ismail was usually lethargic and doleful, as though all his vitality was spent up in amusing the little sultana, in donning his magician's robes and his ornamental mask with its inlaid jewels and veil of silver. Likely the empty bottles of shiraz littered about his apartments was also partly to blame.

Yet now his strange yellow eyes were bright and clear. He was wearing a white smock over his clothes, a startling reversal from the black he swathed himself in at court; initially they lent him an air of mystery (as well as numerous hidden pockets for him to palm his tricks into). Now their purpose was doubly practical: black disguised the color of blood like nothing else.

The mask too was different; plain white, made of stiff fabric rather than plaster or leather; that might have something to do with the climate. It was a hot spring and the palace was due for completion by summer. From the looks of the interior, it was well on its way. The walls, as Farrokh suspected from Ismail's untidy appearance, were freshly plastered. But that was all he'd gotten right in his initial assessment. The ceilings were tall with mouldings bordering the ceiling. Each room led one into another, creating a cross-breeze that brought the distant smell of fresh, salty sea air mixed with the smell of orange blossoms to perfume the place. No dark corners, no ornamentation everywhere, no...no _secrets_. Nowhere to hide.

It was a very honest sort of house, Farrokh thought, surprised by the design and the notion it conjured in his mind. Honest. How could a building be honest? And yet it was. Peaceful. Placid, but with a low hum of energy that invited one to walk from room to room, to peer out the windows onto the excellent views of hills and rolling green fields and the sea, just visible.

Ismail dropped his arm and beckoned him stand just so before a window that took up the entirety of one wall. "The walls will be blue, but only just - I've mixed the paints myself, I want approval over _every_ bucket. Too blue would look muddy, too white and the eye won't be drawn in - look at that, Daroga! Isn't it lovely?"

Indeed, so it was. The sunlight high overhead, casting all in brilliance and light without creating a glare. All the colors out of doors (save the muddy brown pit at the front) were vivid and clear. Green. Blue. White. The windows were frames, Farrokh realized. And the images beyond living landscapes. 

Ismail stood behind him, looking not at the windows, but at Farrokh. His head was cocked and his eyes were entirely shadowed by the mask, but he had his hands clasped together under his chin and was swaying back and forth from foot to foot. 

"Well?" he asked expectantly. "Do you like it?"

It did not matter whether or not Farrokh liked it; it only mattered if His Majesty liked it. But he nodded dumbly, then said, "It's...very nice."

Ismail laughed and laughed. "High praise, coming from you, Daroga! My man of few words and just as much of taste, but you have taste, Daroga, if only a _very_ little. I know it's _very nice_ , but to hear you recognize it does my heart good. Even a dullard and a Philistine must recognize beauty when it stares him so squarely in the face."

Farrokh smiled; in addition to recognizing obvious beauty he could also recognize obvious teasing. And he had learned to hear the smile in Ismail's voice when he could not see it upon his face; though admittedly it had been a long while since he'd heard that smile. In truth, neither of them had much cause for mirth recently. But there was something about this palace, this home, that made one's heart light. An honest sort of house that made people smile. It was not what he would have expected of the magician, not in a thousand years. 

And yet there was Ismail, standing in the midst of the brightness and sweet-scented air beaming and nearly wiggling with pleasure and pride. 

"Where are the builders?" Farrokh asked. He'd only just noticed how quiet it was, how seemingly alone they were. He had known Ismail too well and too long to assume that quiet and solitude meant all was peaceful.

Carelessly he made a shooing gesture with his hand. "I sent them home - there was no use to their hanging about watching paint and plaster dry. But I had not neglected your arrival! Tea and refreshments - come, all is in readiness!"

Ismail kept no servants and wanted no man. This was not done out of modesty; for he would waft about in the finest silks and wools, command a high salary, and stroll the bazaar purchasing any trinket that caught his fancy, never mind the cost, never mind whether he would wear it, use it, or tire of it and forget about it. But he liked his rooms to be his own and wanted no one preparing his meals, laying out his clothes, or even cleaning his rooms apart from himself. Farrokh was permitted to call socially, but not with his man. Thus it was: solitude did not mean peace.

They did not eat inside the palace; there was no kitchen yet, instead Ismail took him to a little whitewashed shack at the edge of the property. There was a small fire out of doors and a cabinet, truck, and hammock indoors. The trunk was closed and clearly playing double duty as a desk; it was strewn over with blueprints and papers, including one colored with several varying shades of light blue. The low cabinet held some rudimentary cooking tools and it was upon its top that Farrok and Ismail took their 'refreshments' - tea, herbed bread and cheese, it was simple, but not too heavy on a hot afternoon. Ismail sipped his tea beneath his veil, but did not eat; that was another of his quirks, he did not dine in company if he could help it.

On the journey back from Russia, it could not be helped; weeks on the road together made comrades even of enemies and Farrokh had no reason to think badly of Ismail, then. He was only an illusionist. A clever mimic. A musician who would play his violin at night, 'to keep the bears away,' he joked. He was funny; even in their first meeting, Farrokh thought he was funny. 

He was hideous, of course. Farrokh had seen his face at the fair in Nizhny Novgorod, its hollows rendered inhuman and even more distorted by torchlight. He had not seen it many times since; it was not the twisted nature of his face that the little Sultana valued Ismail for, not chiefly; it was the workings of his twisted mind. 

When Farrokh agreed to go West to check up on their magician, he swiftly agreed for duty's sake - that was what he told himself, anyway. Not for the sake of the man himself; Farrokh was a man of law and understood that the criminal element must face justice for their crimes. Some said he was a hard man; yet he could not justify the court's newfound taste for 'creative justice,' as the Shah so delicately phrased it. The punishment ought not be more horrific than the crime which condemned the sufferer. Executions, when such things were necessary, should be swift. Yet there could be a mercy in swiftness. And this had been a merciless year for the court. 

Perhaps his initial assessment was wrong. About the honest air about the place. Perhaps this was Ismail's most cunning illusion of all: peace, sunlight, and tranquility. For Farrokh fancied he had seen his soul and it was as black as the robes he favored. And here he was, being lulled into pleasant conversation over tea and bread with someone who less resembled the master of trap-doors and death and more like his traveling companion of long ago: witty and easy, despite his formidable powers of mind and horrific countenance.

"Are you living in here?" Farrokh interrupted Ismail (who had been blathering on about the position of the sun and affecting where the foundation had been dug). "Why not stay in a _khan_ in town?"

"Pah!" Ismail waved a hand. "I prefer to stay here. It's snug, I admit, but fine enough provided it doesn't rain too heavily - which it has not! I could string up another hammock, if you like! They are eminently practical and comfortable."

The look on Farrokh's face spoke more succinctly and eloquently than words ever could; it made Ismail laugh again. What a laugh that man had! A shrill, giggle which raised the hairs on the neck of anyone unfamiliar with it, until it settled into a more relaxed chuckle which sounded more like a laugh ought to. 

"Very well, a bed for his lordship," Ismail nodded, very gravely behind his mask, but his eyes sparkled with humor and mischief. Then he sprang to his feet, insisting that they _must_ visit the beach before sunset.

At that, Farrokh demurred; Ismail might content himself with a shed, but he had a room in town and was tired from his travels. He had his man ready his lodgings and then went straight to the building site. Naturally, he did not tell Ismail that; there was no need to inflate his ego, to make him think that Farrokh was eager to see _him_ and not merely tour the construction site. And so he refused Ismail's invitation to walk down to the shore, again and again as he whined and complained that Farrokh was a boring old man, a dullard, a phlegmatic so-and-so, without a spot of fun to be got from his head to his toes. Then, when he'd followed him down the pathway to the edge of the property and thoroughly lambasted him, Ismail asked:

"Will you come again tomorrow?"

This time the sun was behind Ismail casting him in darkness. There. That was the magician again, as he knew him. A tall, dark line upon the landscape.

"I expect so," Farrokh nodded. 

Indeed he did come back. And early; despite his comfortable rooms, he slept no better than he would have if he had taken Ismail up on his offer of a hammock in a shed. Ismail might have brought his violin, he reflected sourly when he rose with the dawn, finding it a stupid waste of time to make a play of sleeping in when he was wide awake. It was too early for breakfast. Farrokh dressed without waking his man and left the _khan_ , supposing that Ismail must have more food stored away in his shed. He'd asked him back, hadn't he? Doubtless he was prepared to play host again. 

He had every expectation of finding Ismail awake; when they traveled together he was the last to bed and the first to rise, stoking the fire or taking care of the horses. He had a chameleon-like ability to make himself accustomed to any atmosphere, but he was most used to travel, he informed Farrokh who despised travel for his own sake. Give him a comfortable room, however modest, and he could find his way. The dirtiness of the road, the discomfort of caravan travel, became intolerable in time, but Ismail seemed entirely at his ease. 

The grounds were quiet so early. The air heavy with morning dew, which would quickly dry up as the sun took his place in the sky. Farrokh went at once to the shed. The outdoor fire pit was covered to keep out the wet. Ismail did not come running to greet him. 

Asleep? Or gone, most likely. Flitting about he place like a great moth, constantly in motion, enervated and agitated. Still, to be sure, Farrokh peered inside the shed.

And there he was. Curled up inside his hammock, wrapped in a blanket, apparently deeply asleep. As Farrokh's eyes adjusted to the dimness inside he saw that Ismail was unmasked; his head was thrown back and he slept with his mouth wide open - if the Russian photographer was in the city, Farrokh would have hunted him down immediately to take a portrait. 'Angel of Death in Repose.'

His hair was wet. The realization struck Farrokh suddenly and strangely; Ismail had a bath, then took to his bed? But no; he looked closer, taking in the whole picture - in truth, he'd not had such an opportunity to look at his face this closely before. The novelty alone was...

There was a dusting of sand on the floor. One of Ismail's long thin legs was dangling down from the hammock; delicate ankles above a long, slender foot, encrusted at the soles and toes with sand. No bath, then. Ismail had gone to the beach without him, early in the morning it seemed.

His hair glistened dully with water, dark and curling. His breath was even and deep, though Farrokh knew him to be a treacherously light sleeper. He did not venture in, farther, knowing the crunch of sand beneath his own feet would give him away. 

Instead he looked and looked, following the line of that thin white leg, the outline of a knobbly knee, the rest of the body hidden by netting and the blanket up to Ismail's long, thin neck and finally, his face. 

The comical expression of the wide-open mouth took away the horror and the lightness of the morning light dappling in smoothed the hard lines and sickly thin hollows of the eyes, the place where the nose would have been, and the mouth and allowed him to notice details that he had not in the rare occasions where Ismail allowed himself to be seen uncovered. His ears were enormous. Farrokh never noticed before. Compared to the twisted disfigurement that might have been an afterthought. There was a curl to the left side of the upper lip, thin scarring...a harelip repaired. When? The scars looked old. Tiny and precise, unlike the small burn scars on Ismail's hands, the bites from animals and gashes from knives, indentations from rope on his arms. The lip, by contrast, had been sewn up with deliberate care. Who had employed a surgeon? Ismail himself? His...parents?

Farrokh knew almost nothing of the magician's past. His origins were French. Somewhere coastal, but beyond that he did not know. When he first came to Mazandaran he remarked on how beautiful the seaside was, how lovely it was by daylight. How very blue the water was in the sunlight. When he was a child, Ismail remarked offhandedly, he thought that seawater was black as pitch for he only ever saw it at nighttime, under the moon. 

A child. Farrokh's eyes and senses took in the face and his body reacted with a dawning horror that had nothing to do with its twisted appearance. 

_It is a young face_ , he thought with cold certainty, feeling an icy trickle of shocking realization overtake him. _He is...a young man. Little more than a child. How long ago was it that he thought the sea was black?_

The flesh, though thin and sallow, was nevertheless smooth and unlined. The relative hairlessness of his neck and jaw a product of youth rather than infirmity. And the patches of skin on his arm and shoulders, the bare leg arcing toward the ground, were tight and firm. In the hazy light of the coming dawn, his skin looked very soft indeed.

The brow furrowed; water trickled down his neck and Ismail shifted. At once Farrokh withdrew, walking, then running. Putting as much distance between himself and that shed as he could.

He found himself at the seashore. Fishermen were trickling down to cast off in their boats and he found a secluded patch of sand at the water's edge. Not knowing what else to do, he sat, heavily, head in his hands, elbows balanced on his knees.

 _What have I done?_ he asked himself over and over. _What a fool I've been! What an idiot!_

Was he a keen investigator of criminal matters? A master of observation? As Ismail himself might say: _Pah!_ A dullard. A dullard, indeed. Fooled by a depth of voice, a length of limb, a commanding presence which was all just youthful bravado! 

Add to the above a scale and breadth of genius that Farrokh (dullard!) had never encountered before and he had cheerfully deluded himself that he was taking to the court a man in his prime. His own age, or perhaps older. And all of the thousand clues Ismail had unconsciously given, 'Come and see, Daroga, come and see what I've done!', 'What's money for, if not spending?', 'Supper is all well and good, but why indulge in rice and meat when there are sweets to be had?' which bespoke his age, Farrokh attributed to a kind of eccentricity and madness. 

And he had taken this boy, an adolescent, with a great broad mind, still so malleable and promised him fame and riches. And the boy had come. And the boy had built extraordinary things and lapped up the praise and accolades like any child would bask in the praise of a teacher or a parent. And when those same admirers asked for something different, something not merely amusing, but purposeful and terrible, he agreed. Eager to please. And at night tried to flush the day's work out with bottles of shiraz.

Farrokh thought he had been mistaken in his first impression of Ismail. That the clever travelling companion was a ruse and the real man was the master of the dark arts the court wanted him to be. Wrong. So terribly, sinfully wrong.

Raising his head, Farrokh looked at the sea; he'd been able to smell it on Ismail. A salty, clean smell. Mingling with the orange groves and air. Green and orange and his beloved blue. 

Farrokh tasted salt on his tongue. Was it the mist off the sea? Or had he been crying?

With a grunt he rose to his feet. He must go back. To the half-completed palace. To Ismail. He _had_ to. The reason hardly mattered: guilt, duty, or affection. 

Amends were beyond him; the punishment should fit the crime, but they were well past the point of punishment. The crime itself was two years old and to whom would Ismail complain? He did not seem to even realize a great wrong had been done him. 

A spark of something lit in Farrokh's breast as he followed the path of the rising sun back to that garden, that bright and beautiful seaside palace. If he was powerless to enact justice perhaps, if he himself was quick and clever and careful, he could affect a rescue.


End file.
